1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information acquiring method, and a computer program product, and more particularly, to acquisition of information stored in an apparatus or a system without redundancy.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a client uses a service of a server connected on a network, the client is generally requested to present a user name, a password, and the like to the server to prevent an illegal access to the server. In such a case, when a plurality of user management servers (e.g., document management servers) are set, every time the user uses each of the user management servers, the user needs to input the user name, the password, and the like to the server. Therefore, the operation is complicated for the user.
As an apparatus for solving such a problem, a user information handling apparatus that manages information on a user is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-259111. In such an apparatus, when information requested by the user is not present in a server that receives the request, the apparatus passes a user name, a password, and the like to another server and can perform user authentication without requesting the user to input the user name, the password, and the like again.
However, in the technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-259111, the apparatus needs to perform the user authentication to acquire information stored by the respective servers. Therefore, it is necessary to store the user name, the password, and the like for each of the servers. For example, when the user changes the password, the user needs to change the password for the respective servers. As a result, it is impossible to prevent the complicated work.
Plural pieces of identical information may be stored by purpose in, for example, a server apparatus, a terminal apparatus, or a system including the server apparatus and the terminal apparatus. When a certain piece of information is changed, it is necessary to apply processing for changing information to all areas in which the piece of information is stored. Therefore, enormous amount of work is necessary to keep consistency of the information.